I recently played Armada 1 and installed BAB5 including the AI patch and came upon a 'light bulb' moment during an eventful round of doom bringing. Under certain circumstances you can control and build the Narn and Centauri races but otherwise cannot. The first cirumstance involves a two player map called hidden treasures that lets you capture and then build Centauri ships and eventually structures. The second is if you tweak the starting conditions for instant match and choose to play alliances(selection located under the crew 99999 option) while selecting the interstellar alliance faction you get several ships including a narn transport. This allows you to then build narn ships and structures. Could someone edit the required fields in the "ai addon" thus making the two races accessible from the start. I.E. a buildable option from each races initial starbase or as an additional starting unit.

completely understood and take your time grieving. i will say that i figured out how to add the ships to the maps via the map editor. i even (through the scouring the older forum topics) got those maps to work and have enjoyed that in the meantime.